If Not, Why Not?

Right here I am - Open Water Qualified and happy as Larry. I completed my course this morning and it was pretty sweet. Our first dive was down to 18 meters at a place called Chumpon Pinnacle. The Lonely Planet heralds this site as the best in Ko Tao. Visibility was a bit questionable but the dive was still very enjoyable.

Our second dive was at a place called Twins. Braura and Otta this is the dive spot in front of that Nang Yuan Island where they wouldn't let us take our fins. It's a pity we didn't manage to get out there because the coral and such was helluva impressive. Vis here was much better and although we didn't dive as deep it was definitely the more enjoyable of the two. I managed to swim past a massive bluey silver fish (I really need to learn the names of the fish) and he came in at about a meter in length. We also saw loads of smaller fish but in massive schools....really beautiful stuff.

On our way out in the boat this morning we were treated to a meter and a half long Marlin, jumping in and out the water like you might see a dolphin doing, it was incredible.

At the moment I would say that the diving I did in the Red Sea was better than Thailand. The visibility there was impressive and the colours and variety of sea life supercedes what I've seen here so far. But I'm not prepared to give up hope just yet. In a moment of spontanaety I decided to sign up for the Advanced Open Water course. This course should be insane. It only takes 2 more days but we do another 5 dives. One (or more) of them we dive down to 30 meters and we also do a night dive. This should be fun. You cruise down under the cover of darkness armed only with a torch and the knowledge that nothing "should" go wrong. Don't stress Mom, they say it's just as safe as diving during the day just a little different that's all.

So that's another 2 days of diving and then I'll have 4 days of Steve time to relax and read and swim. The end of this trip has been filled with awesome stuff right to the very end and I've been meeting some very cool people here at the dive school so it's probably best that I decided to do the diving toward the end of the trip now that I'm travelling on my ace. Nights have been spent drinking, eating quality food off the braai and sometimes someone might even pull out the 'geet' and play some tunes out on the deck.

So not that long to go now and I'm not sure if there will be any more posts from Thailand. Maybe just one more to report on the night dive. Cheers for now.

Baj